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Game Resources |
These are recommended starting points for learning more about board games,
and exploring gaming as a hobby. Lists here are just a small sampling of
high quality resources for gamers.
BoardGameGeek.com (a.k.a. BGG) is
the IMDB of board games, with massive user-contributed content for over 101,000
games and expansions as of September 2018. In addition to basic facts about
publisher, publication date, number of player, time to play, etc., one can
browse images, find sellers, read reviews, discuss strategy, download player
aids, find relevant websites, and much more.
A good place to start looking for "gateway" games, i.e. games that are best
for introducing oneself or others to modern boardgames, is to
browse the Family category of BoardGameGeek.com by selecting the "Family"
filter under "Board Game subdomain" of the
advanced search page.
(See also RPGGeek.com and
VideoGameGeek.com for role-playing
games and video games, respectively.)
Stores
-
Local Gettysburg, PA stores:
- Online stores:
- BoardGamePrices.com - Not
a store, but a way of comparing board game prices across online stores.
Awards
There are so many new games each year, it can be overwhelming to try to get a
sense of the cream of the crop. It's helpful to peruse a number of annual
awards to see which games stand out on multiple lists. Which awards you
pay attention to will depend on your own tastes, but these are ones I tend to
watch:
Books
I recommend these as the foundation books for a game library:
- General
-
The New Games Treasury
by Merilyn Simonds Mohr - My favorite treasury of 500+ diverse games
with good illustrations and interesting historical information. Although
out of print, it is still relatively easy to purchase a used copy.
If you purchase only one book on games, this should be the one.
-
The New Complete Hoyle Revised by Edmond Hoyle, A H Morehead,
Richard L. Frey, Geoffrey Mott-Smith - This is good general book of game
rules with a focus on card games.
- Card:
The Penguin Book of Card Games by David Parlett - Described as "the
dead tree version of the Pagat card game website", this card game rule book
has impressive coverage of the most popular card games around the world.
- Dice:
Dice Games Properly Explained by Reiner Knizia - My favorite
dice game rule book, as it not only features many diverse dice games,
but it also categorizes them well and discusses basic strategy.
A good way to get good deals on used books, etc. at Amazon is to use
camelcamelcamel.com to get an idea of
the typical price range (e.g.
The New Games Treasury) and to set up a free watch and notification for when
an item price drops to or below your desired limit.
Starting Out
I often wonder what would be best first game purchases that would provide the
most board and card gaming value for the money. These are my current
recommendations. In most cases, these recommendations reflect a balance of
price and quality considerations, and one can generally find lower prices (with
lesser quality) or higher quality (with higher prices). The best beginner
game kits would be constructed by buying good quality components in bulk and
dividing them among a group of gamers. This would be fun to do someday...
"Professor Todd's Bag of Games" anyone?
- Playing Cards - You can't do much better than a low-cost, high-quality
deck of cards (e.g.
Bicycle).
- A single good deck can currently be found in most retail stores for
under $2 with good bulk deals in warehouse stores and
online.
- Rules to hundreds of good card games can be found online at
www.pagat.com, as well as in books
listed above.
- One nice small portable book of card game rules is
Play According to Hoyle: Hoyle's Rules of Games (Paperback) by
Albert H. Morehead (Editor), Geoffrey Mott-Smith (Editor)
- A smaller, well-curated, diverse collection of card games rules with
commentary on strategy is David Parlett's
Teach Yourself Card Games.
- Pencil and Paper - Again, very little money needed for a wide range of
interesting games (e.g. Hangman, Dots and Boxes, Picture Charades (basis of
Pictionary), The Dictionary Game (basis of Balderdash), Guggenheim (basis of
Scattergories), Jotto, Crosswords (a.k.a. Word Squares), etc., etc.)
- Rules websites:
Wikipedia,
About,
Pencil and Paper Games, my
Paper Pen-guins game
- Books:
The New Games Treasury,
Games with Pencil and Paper,
100 Strategic Games for Pen and Paper
- Presentation:
Plentiful Possibilities for Pen, Pencil, and Paper Play
- For quality pencils for use in group games, opt for a
bulk pack of Ticonderoga No. 2 Pencils.
- For paper, I recommend cutting paper used on one side down to
smaller sheets with a
paper cutter, if available. Reuse before recycling!
- Dice - As with playing cards, dice allow a variety of games for very
little cost.
- Chess Set - Chess has a rich history and allows great depth of study,
but there are also many Chess variations and puzzles that can be played with
a standard set, as well as many other games as well (see below under Poker
Chips).
- Chess websites: Chess.com,
ChessGames.com,
FIDE,
USCF
- Books:
Chess for Juniors: A Complete Guide for the Beginner,
The Game of Chess (Algebraic Edition) by Siegbert Tarrasch
- Wholesale Chess - an excellent online store for chess supplies.
There are many bad, cheap plastic chess/checker sets in stores.
For a good budget set, look for standard board size sets with vinyl mat
boards, plastic pieces, and storage bags in the
Club Chess Set section. While still relatively inexpensive, I
enjoy the
Tournament Chess Sets with weightier pieces. Standard board sizes
and standard poker chips (below) can be used together for a variety of
games (e.g. Checkers, Amazons; see below under Poker Chips).
- Chess variants online: The
Chess Variant Pages,
Wikipedia
- Poker Chips - Beyond Poker, Poker chips may be used for a variety of
games:
- Poker chips may be purchased separately, or as part of a
budget set. Bargains on 11.5 gram plastic piece sets in
aluminum cases can be a great value. Generally the included cards
(and sometimes dice) are very poor quality, so focus on the weight of
the chips and the portability.
- Poker books:
- Chess and Chip Games - Use the Poker chips on a Chess board to play other games such as
Checkers,
Connect Four,
Gomoku,
Lines of Action,
etc.
- Amazons -
Originally called
El Juego de
las Amazonas ("The Game of the Amazons"), this is an excellent
abstract territorial strategy game with very simple rules, yet lots of
depth to grow in interest as one grows. As of this writing, only a
paper grid version can be easily purchased from
Kadon.
However, one can play a smaller variation with a Chess set and Poker
chips as follows: Use pawns for Amazon pieces and Poker chips to mark
squares with arrows. Place white pawns at A3, C1, F1, and H3 of the
chessboard. Place black pawns at A6, C8, F8, and H6. Beyond the setup,
rules follow as in the
Wikipedia
article.
- Mr. Pauper's Penguins - This
presentation compares Amazons and
Hey! That's My Fish! , and introduces my variation, Amazon Penguins,
combining the two. The "Mr. Pauper's Penguins" slide describes how
one can play the excellent game Hey! That's My Fish! using Poker chips
and small game tokens.
- Poker chips may also be used to count score or serve as play money
in other games.
- Recommended
Games for Children - Games listed here have good value for all ages.
They are specially selected to be relatively accessible to many with simple
rules, yet in most cases having depth that can engage players through a
lifetime.
-
The New Games Treasury
by Merilyn Simonds Mohr - My favorite treasury of 500+ diverse games
with good illustrations and interesting historical information. Although
out of print, it is still relatively easy to purchase a used copy.
Bare-bones basic budget bargain bundle - Assuming access to game rules and
information online, and basic items likely found at home (e.g. pencils, paper,
plastic cups), here is a sample set of budget game supplies (as of 9/19/2018):
So the base cost for equipment to play many hundreds of excellent games is
about $30. Obviously, shipping costs increase the price, so bulk
purchases split among gamers has a significant impact on total cost.
Deeper Interests
The Study of Games
Game Theory,
Game AI (Artificial
Intelligence), and
Recreational
Mathematics are academic subfields that focus on reasoning about games and
puzzles. Even without an advanced degree, there are areas of Recreational
Mathematics that have attracted the interest and creative activity of
non-mathematicians. The late Martin Gardner brought Recreational
Mathematics to a broader audience through his Mathematical Recreations column in
Scientific American. Thus, as a starting point for mathematical enjoyment
of games, I recommend
Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games, a CD-ROM collection of his Recreational
Mathematics books in PDF form.
MathPuzzle.com is Ed Pegg Jr.'s excellent website for following recent
developments in Recreational Mathematics.
Game Design
HumbleBundle.com
HumbleBundle.com has regularly
offered inexpensive pay-what-you-want bundles with not only video games, but
video game adaptations of board/card games, software for game programming and
book bundles with themes such as game design, roleplaying game references, and
video game programming. This is one of few sites where I appreciate
getting regular updates, and I recommend it to all budget gamers.
Last updated September 19, 2018
Todd Neller